1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to ice making and dispensing machines, and is particularly concerned with a method and apparatus for producing, bagging and dispensing ice in bags.
2. Introduction
Machines have been developed for making ice in various forms (cubes or other shapes, crushed ice, and the like) packaging the ice loosely in bags, and delivering the bags of ice into a storage compartment accessible by customers in supermarkets. Such machines are designed with a top part with an ice cube making unit, a central packing machine which packs the ice loosely in bags, and a lower part with a storage compartment into which the bags are dropped from the packing machine. The storage compartment has an access door which can be opened by a customer to retrieve a desired number of ice bags.
In prior ice dispensing or distributing machines, the bagging process involved dispensing ice into pre-made bags which are stored in a magazine in the bagging unit. This is relatively expensive and requires frequent changing of magazines as the bags are used up. Another problem is variation in weight of ice supplied to each bag. Also, the ice can potentially start to melt as it is distributed into bags.
One example of an ice bagging apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,368,608. This apparatus comprise an ice maker which is placed above an ice collecting and bagging zone. The ice maker dispenses ice directly into a bag. This causes condensate to enter some of the ice bags during filling when the ice maker has completed a defrost cycle. This has the disadvantage that the water freezes the ice cubes together into bigger solid blocks, which are hard to separate.